Squeezed

Squeezed

Adult nonfiction
"In Squeezed you will meet a professor on food stamps in
Chicago, an unemployed restaurant manager in Boston, and a nanny in
New York City betrayed by the American Dream, and you will even hear
about pharmacists who lost their jobs to a robot in Pittsburgh. They
are people on the brink who did everything 'right,' and yet the math
of their family lives is simply not adding up. Some are just getting
by. For others, something happened and they tumbled down and never
got up."
Recall a few years ago we learned through Guy Standing's The
Precariat; The New Dangerous Class about the desperate plight of the
people at the bottom of our nation's economic ladder? I'm sure a lot
of readers thought it would always be someone else doomed to suffer.
After all they had higher education and skills. In Squeezed: Why Our
Families Can't Afford America Alissa Quart (quoted above) tells us how
precariousness is climbing up the ladder, afflicting even people in
formerly secure positions. Whether we realize it or not, increasingly
few of us are safe. This is due not only to the rising costs of
everything, but to other insidious factors.
One factor is the changing roles in many respected professions.
When you think of college professors you probably envision tenured
faculty ensconced in ivory towers, secure in lifetime employment and
pulling down decent pay and benefit packages. An increasing number,
however, are adjuncts--part time contingent employees with no chance
of making the tenure track or even working full time at one
institution. Paid (poorly) by the course, usually with no benefits,
they must commute between several institutions to simply make rent.
Another factor is automation. We're not just talking about
factory workers. Pharmacy robots are taking the place of
pharmacists. Robot nurses are being trained to take care of
patients. And how about lawyers? A lot of them are un or
underemployed thanks to that profession becoming robotized.
In my mind squeezed is as scary as anything penned by Stephan
King. But we need to read it. What we don't know can hurt us big time.
On a personal note, here in Penobscot County the lilac blooming left
sweetly perfumed air and aggravated allergies. Now we've seeing
lovely lupines. The weather was a little too perfect the weekend of
the Veazie town wide yard sale--at least from a buyer's perspective.
A lot of would be sellers were spending recreation time with friends
and family. There were very few sales. I found one that had anything
I wanted. Oh well, it was a nice walk.
A great big shout out goes out to the people who will go to all the
work of setting up and running yard sales this summer.
jules hathaway


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